"The absence of Shakib Al Hasan, who is about to have surgery on his right leg, will have a major impact on Bangladesh's bowling attack. His injury, because of the workload he shouldered over the last five years, is a signal to the Bangladesh Cricket Board that it needs to do something to improve the sluggish development of fast bowling in the country.

There hasn't been much effort to look for raw fast bowling talent at grassroots level either. According to former national coach Sarwar Imran, the success of previous nationwide pace hunts should have prompted the board into looking for more fast bowlers. But the concept hasn't been pushed, much to the dismay of Imran.

"There hasn't been any progress in the hunt for fast bowlers in Bangladesh," Imran, a leading fast bowling coach and mentor, said. "There haven't been any pace bowling hunts in the last 3-4 years. The pipeline is dry. There aren't many pace bowlers coming up, which is a shame because the success rate of the two district-level hunts was quite high."

"Mashrafe Mortaza came up from an Under-17 camp while Rubel Hossain and Shafiul Islam are both from nationwide hunts. But these programs have stopped and I really don't know how these pace bowlers will come up from the different districts."

"The culture of the national team's training sessions has also contributed to Shakib's injury. I have observed that these days the senior players are not pushed too hard in training. I suspect that is one of the reasons for Shakib to have become weakened.

I am unsure just how many more times this can all be said to be honest.

It's frustrated the hell outta me since 2010.

__________________
No Cheating. No Corruption. No Excuses.
Players/Coaches have a duty to report and help clean up our wonderful game of cricket. We are the guardians of the game for the fans.

No pace academy, no talent hunts. Sri Lanka now has 4 fast bowling coaches- 1 for NT, 1 to work with both NT and pace academy and 2 dedicated for their pace unit. On top of that Murali is supposed to mentor the spinners.

It might be stretching the boundary a bit to attribute Shakib's injury to the dearth of pacers, but the fact that BCB has done nothing lately about pacer-development is true. Perhaps Isam should write in the national dailies about this.

Originally Posted by Ian Pont
I thank the guys who did donate and I have had 2 donations of $50.

The plan is, and still remains, that when the amount gets up to a high enough level, then we can implement something. We need it to be around 3-4 lakh dollars.

I am sure you will agree that $100 isn't going very far, though at present. We cannot even buy two Kookaburra balls with it.

Yeah $100 won't do anything at all. I think after 2 seasons of BPL you have some relationships/understandings with the corporate world of Bangladesh. DG had so many sponsors -- BanglaLion, Scan Cement, Anjans, Channel 24, Radio Foorti, Matador etc. These are all somewhat big companies. I think if you pitch your idea to them they might invest.

3-4 lakh dollars is a lot of money. Public contribution from BC and elsewhere won't come anywhere close to that number.

Originally Posted by mufi_02
Yeah $100 won't do anything at all. I think after 2 seasons of BPL you have some relationships/understandings with the corporate world of Bangladesh. DG had so many sponsors -- BanglaLion, Scan Cement, Anjans, Channel 24, Radio Foorti, Matador etc. These are all somewhat big companies. I think if you pitch your idea to them they might invest.

3-4 lakh dollars is a lot of money. Public contribution from BC and elsewhere won't come anywhere close to that number.

Bhai, I have been speaking to companies and people since I arrived in BD on September 2010 and realised there was no Pace Academy.

I am aware that contributions of $50 here and there will not cut it. There might be a business who donates a large sum of course.

There are 100s of wealthy businesses in BD who could help. It seems I am the lone voice though in trying to make something happen. So rather than advise me what to do, why doesn't someone actually help?

__________________
No Cheating. No Corruption. No Excuses.
Players/Coaches have a duty to report and help clean up our wonderful game of cricket. We are the guardians of the game for the fans.

Originally Posted by Ian Pont
Bhai, I have been speaking to companies and people since I arrived in BD on September 2010 and realised there was no Pace Academy.

I am aware that contributions of $50 here and there will not cut it. There might be a business who donates a large sum of course.

There are 100s of wealthy businesses in BD who could help. It seems I am the lone voice though in trying to make something happen. So rather than advise me what to do, why doesn't someone actually help?

As i said Bangladesh cricket is killing itself if no company is willing to invest in a pace academy. BCB should try to get something up and runnning at least. Argh this is so frustrating.

Originally Posted by Ian Pont
Bhai, I have been speaking to companies and people since I arrived in BD on September 2010 and realised there was no Pace Academy.

I am aware that contributions of $50 here and there will not cut it. There might be a business who donates a large sum of course.

There are 100s of wealthy businesses in BD who could help. It seems I am the lone voice though in trying to make something happen. So rather than advise me what to do, why doesn't someone actually help?

Bhaiya, I understand your frustration. I am not any of those wealthy businessman in BD and the only help I can do is give free advice.

I think you can also look into privately funded cricket academies and work with them. It will be easier to expand an existing academy rather than build a brand new one. I think Pilot and Imrul Kayes has such academies.

Ian, the problem with Bangladesh is that there will be a lot of people talking and no body is willing to back it up. I am sure when you went to meet with these so called rich companies in Dhaka, they all were full of advice and vision but no action when it came to lending a monetary helping hand.

Let's just take BC as an example. There are so many well wishers of cricket here but unfortunately you only got donations from 2 members. Unless the rest don't believe in the approach you are taking, I do not see why at least a couple of hundred people should not come forward and open their wallets to you.

If we could have Isam publish a report of this pace bowling academy initiative of yours and also if BC could make a donation of $5000 (that can also be part of that report), it's a win-win situation for both parties.

Originally Posted by betaar
Let's just take BC as an example. There are so many well wishers of cricket here but unfortunately you only got donations from 2 members. Unless the rest don't believe in the approach you are taking, I do not see why at least a couple of hundred people should not come forward and open their wallets to you.